ABSTRACT
Women’s exact contribution to industrialization and the family economy in the western world is impossible to measure, but available evidence makes it clear that women played a vital role to early factory manufacture. It is also clear that in both Great Britain and the United States, women, both married and single, came to be viewed as cheap labour. In Britain, employers’ reliance on a labour surplus and low wages for all their workers ultimately became detrimental to business because it hindered technological investment. The American situation was almost the reverse. During industrialization, the labour shortage, combined with relatively high wages, necessitated that manufacturers invest in technology to reduce the required labour. Yet, while long-term business decisions help to explain management systems and the longer-term paths of the two cotton industries, they overlook the initial process of organizing the shop floor, establishing boundaries for jobs and wages and the diversity of perceived best practice.
